The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (190721).Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance.

X. English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford.

§ 13. Franciscans and Dominicans.

We have seen that the university of Paris originated in the cathedral school of Notre-Dame. The education of Europe might have long remained in the hands of the secular clergy, but for the rise of the new orders of the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the second decade of the thirteenth century. The old monastic orders had made their home in solitary places, far removed from the world, while the aim of the Franciscan order was not to withdraw to the lonely valleys and mountains but to work in the densely crowded towns